Deconstructing The Origins of Life: Five Questions Worth Asking

A couple weeks ago, a Jehovah's Witness came by my house and engaged me in
conversation. He was a sincere, intelligent, polite man, and a former Catholic,
like myself. Although I doubted he would have much to say that could convince
me that science is wrong and the Bible has the answers to earthly questions,
he reassured me that Jehovah's Witnesses were not like creationists, and that
he had some pamphlets that would challenge the way I thought.

He gave me two pamphlets, each about 30 pages long, and I said I'd read them.
Even though I didn't expect to find anything life changing there, I agreed
to read it because it is good to know what other people believe. He said
he'd return in a couple of weeks and we could talk about it.

After putting it off for a week, I finally got down to reading the first
pamphlet, titled, The Origins of Life: Five Questions Worth Asking.
The pages contained one false statement after another, one failure of logic
after another, and I began writing down notes so I could point them out when
the gentleman returned. In the end, it was quite a chore, so I skipped over
many smaller quibbles.

When I was done, I decided that maybe I could save someone else the work by
putting my notes online. I've expanded parts of it from my terse notes to
add a bit more context. This is the result. It isn't a scholarly work,
you'll soon figure out. If you find failures in my logic or examples, or
have even better examples, please let me know, as I don't intend to mislead
anyone. Also, this was all written from the top of my head and I didn't
bother to document my assertions; it was taking up too much time to begin
with. I am not a biologist, just a fan of science, so don't take anything I
say as true; double check for yourself.

After completing this (at the expense of about half an hour of reading and
eight hours writing), I searched the web and found some other really well
done papers on this very brochure. Please skip to the end to see
these other references.

Below, references and direct quotes to the Watchtower authored brochure
are set off as block quotes with a light yellow background.
Quotes from other documents are set off in a purple/blue background.
Sorry, I never had the box of crayons with 52 different colors, leaving me
unable to describe colors well.

The preface starts by painting the picture of an earnest student torn
between believing what his Biblically-minded parents have told him
and what his science teacher has just taught him about evolution, namely
that

This melodramatic intro seems to be casting Darwin as conqueror, a man with a
predetermined agenda. In fact, his theory triumphed over Lamarckism, the
idea that the changes a parent went through in life would be passed on to its
child (e.g., a man who does physical labor would produce children with bigger
muscles). Darwin had qualms about publishing his theory as he knew the
implications would upset many people. It took decades of refinement and the
threat of being upstaged before he finally published.

It should also be noted that many people before Darwin had noticed the
similarities of various species and had debated evolution vs. creation.
Darwin's contribution was to provide a mechanism for how evolution happened,
along with very detailed evidence and careful reasoning to explain it.

Sooner or later, all of use need to confront the question,
Was life created, or did it evolve? (p. 3)

This is a false dichotomy, as these are two separate questions.

The scientific term for how life originated from non-life is "abiogenesis."
Science has a large body of evidence concerning evolution, but the question
of the origin of life is very much unresolved; no scientist claims to have
the answer. However, that doesn't mean one guess is as good as another;
certain hypotheses can be ruled out, and any good theory would have to be
able to explain a lot of known evidence.

Evolution refers to the process whereby a population changes its
characteristics over time in response to changing conditions. Unlike some
religious groups, science doesn't make a categorical boundary between
"micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution." Evolution is a continuum of change
from imperceptibly small and as large as the transition from bacteria to
human.

... some scientists seem reluctant to discuss an even more
fundamental question -- where did life come from? (p. 4)

We see one of the common failures here. Many quotes in this tract refer
to anonymous "some scientists." In a world with hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of people who call themselves scientists, no doubt there
is "some scientist" who can be found to claim just about anything if you are
willing to look hard enough ... or, as well shall see, quote selectively
enough. What matters in the end is whether or not the scientists most
actively involved in a given area of research have built a firm consensus
of opinion.

As to the reluctance of "some scientists" to discuss where life came from,
certainly no scientists is going to speak with certainty on the subject,
but don't confuse that with reluctance. Instead, call it intellectual
honesty or humility.

Other equally respected scientists who also support evolution disagree.
They speculate that the first cells or at least their major components
arrived on earth from outer space. (p. 4)

This is not a contradiction. Ask anybody who thinks life on earth
originated from outer space (panspermia) would tell you that that life
had to originate somewhere. It doesn't answer the question of how did
life start, but simply claims it originated somewhere other than earth.

I'm no expert, but it is my understanding that such scientists who believe
that life on Earth came from outer space are in the small minority.

Researchers have learned that for a cell to survive, at least three
different types of complex molecules must work together --
DNA, RNA, and proteins. (p. 5)

This is simply false. That is how life as we know it is now arranged, but no
scientist would claim that these are all required for life. In fact, there
is a hypothesis called "RNA world" which posits that earlier life forms used
RNA only and not DNA. There are also RNA molecules that are self-catalyzing
and don't need proteins to replicate. These aren't living, but it hints
at ways that life could have originated.

The authors of this reductio ad absurdum think they have shown that
evolution can't possibly be true, but in fact are showing that their
hypothesis is not true.

This exposes a second common mistake in this pamphlet: claiming that the
way life is arranged on Earth at this moment in time must be how life has
always been. It is consistent with a creationist world view that things
appeared on Earth at once in their perfected state, but evolution doesn't
require that.

The probability that just one protein containing only 100 amino
acids could ever randomly form on earth has been calculated to
be about once chance in a million billion. (p. 6)

Although they aren't exactly young Earth creationists, from reading this
pamphlet I've found that they are in all respects creationists.
This quote is discredited creationist propaganda 101. Nobody claims that
early life looked like simple existing life forms. After all, they have had
billions of years of refinement. Nobody claims that millions of atoms just
happened to fall together in the right arrangement to create life (this is
the tornado in a junk yard assembling a working 747 metaphor).

Similarly, if scientists ever did construct a cell, the would accomplish
something truly amazing, but would they prove that the cell could be
made by accident? If anything, they would prove the very opposite,
would they not? (pp. 6, 7)

No, it wouldn't, but it would show that there is no magic in the cell beyond
chemistry. It would show that God isn't required to create life.
It certainly wouldn't prove that God was required to create life.

All scientific evidence to date indicates that life can come only
from previously existing life. (p. 7)

That is a fabrication. In fact, scientific reasoning operates on the
assumption that natural laws are observed at all times and all places,
and that supernatural cause is not permissible explanation of anything.

To believe that even a "simple" living cell arose by chance from
nonliving chemicals requires a huge leap of faith. (p. 7)

I approve of the use of the word "faith" as an insult, but I suspect the
believers who read this tract will not see why faith is a poor basis for
developing a robust belief system.

At any rate, abiogenesis has nothing to do with faith. Faith means believing
in something even if there is no evidence, even in spite of counter-evidence.
Science is unlike faith in that it follows the evidence. Many religious
people love to claim that the Bible contains absolute, unchanging truths, and
that science keeps "changing its mind." That is because faith is threatened
by counter evidence, while science thrives on it. Counter evidence is the
sharpest knife to cut the falsehoods from the truth.

Fact: All scientific research indicates that life cannot spring
from nonliving matter. (p. 7)

This "fact" is 180 degrees from right -- there is no scientific principle
which says that anything magic is required to create life.

This is another example of the poor reasoning used by the authors of this
pamphlet. They fall into the trap repeatedly of claiming that just because
something can't be done today that it won't be possible in the future.
To illustrate, let's use an example which isn't so contentious as the
origin of life. In 1990, modems over phone lines ran up to 14.4 Kbps.
It wasn't possible to send 1 Mbps over the phone lines then, but it would
have been foolish to claim, "All scientific research indicates that modems
will never send data faster than 14.4 Kbps."

Craig Ventor et al created a bacterium by synthesizing its DNA from
completely synthetic sources. This was plugged into a host cell devoid
of its own DNA, from a different bacterial species, yet the new life form
replicated just fine. This isn't a pure creation of a cell from scratch,
but it is also not the simplest possible life form. I expect that in my
lifetime (I'm 47) such a feat will be accomplished.

Fact: Researchers have recreated in the laboratory the environmental
conditions that they believe existed early in the earth's history.
In these experiments, a few scientists have manufactured some of
the molecules found in living things. (p. 7)

This is in reference the famous Stanley Miller experiments. Nobody thinks
these are anything but toy models. Other experiments with different
procedures have produced all 21 commonly used amino acids. Even so, no
scientist makes the claim that this proves how life started, just that the
precursors
could have been generated without life.

Fact: Protein and RNA molecules must work together for a cell to
survive. Scientists admit that it is highly unlikely that
RNA formed by chance.

We've seen this mistake before. Life today involves a complex dance between
RNA, protein, and other environmental agents. This doesn't mean ancient life
worked the same way. The second sentence is a non sequitur, and phrased in a
way that attempts to imply that science believes that its hypothesis is
highly unlikely.

This whole chapter can be summed up this way: Wow! Science has discovered a
ton of really interesting things about how life works, and it is very
complicated, so complicated we don't understand a lot of it yet. Therefore
science is wrong and the Bible is right because we found a broad metaphor
in the Bible that says God created life.

This question is also misguided: although the simplest forms of life
today are still complicated as compared to, say, a wind-up toy, that
has no impact on the question of abiogenesis. It simply shows that
more than three billion years of evolution can lead to impressive
self-organized control systems.

You can skip the rest of these points without missing much.

Your body is one of the most complex structures in the universe.
It is made up of some 100 trillion tiny cells -- bone cells,
blood cells, brain cells, to name a few. In fact, there are more
than 200 different types of cells in your body. (p. 8)

This page gives a number of interesting/amazing facts about the human body.
This is trying to lay the foundation to make the argument that such
complexity couldn't have happened randomly.

Note, though, that these facts were determined by scientific inquiry, not
by reading the Bible. Now I get to ask a question of you: which method
has a track record of delivering a better understanding of the world:
the Bible or biology?

What does the Bible say? ... "Of course, every house is constructed
by someone, but he that constructed all things is God. (Hebrews, 3:4)"
(p. 9)

This may be appealing to common-sense, but common sense is often wrong.
That is the whole point of science -- to verify how things actually
are, not how we imagine they might be.

We are discussing life, not houses.
Houses aren't alive;
houses don't self replicate;
houses haven't spent three billion years refining and adapting themselves
to their environment.

If everything has a creator, who created God?

Another Bible passage says: "How many your works are, O Jehovah!
All of them in wisdom you have made. The earth is full of your
productions. ... There are moving things without number, living
creatures, small as well as great." (Psalm 104:24, 25)
(p. 9)

I have no idea how this has any bearing on the question of whether any
form of life is simple, why biology is wrong, or if the Bible has any
insight into the question. It is simply a claim that the God made
everything.

Useless, unprovable claims are a dime a dozen. There are other, even older,
ancient texts which make their own claims about creation. How can one tell
which creation myth is correct, if any?

If the theory of evolution is true, it should offer a plausible
explanation of how the first "simple" cell formed by chance. (p. 9)

No, it shouldn't, any more than the theory of gravity should explain it.
Evolution and abiogenesis are two different things.

Also, who says that the first life had to be in a cell?

Instead, the theory goes, unintelligent "nature" figure out a way
not only to make radical changes in the function of the ingested
cells but also to keep the adapted cells inside of the "host" cell
when it replicated.*
(* = no experimental evidence exists to show that such an event
is possible)
(p. 9)

The phrasing definitely is cast in a way to lead the reader to think the
thought is implausible. Yes, the subsumed cell did undergo radical
specialization, but no scientist thinks it happened quickly. There are many
cases of symbiotic relationships that have resulted in co-adaptation,
and this is just one example.

BTW, the theory of endosymbiosis was famously advocated by Lynn Margulis, and
there was a lot of resistance from scientific orthodoxy (as there should be
for new ideas), but the evidence seems to indicate she was probably right.

To a layperson, this might sound like a "just so" story, but one would have
to assume the scientists are simpletons that they believe things just because
it aids their case. That isn't how it works: when making a surprising claim,
one needs strong proof. And the proof comes in the form of genetic analysis.
The genetic code of mitochondrial DNA is related to existing bacteria; further,
it is more closely related to those bacteria than those bacteria are related
to many other existing bacteria.

As you do so, ask yourself whether such a cell could arise by chance.
(p. 9)

This is a pointless exercise. Why should laypeople use their intuition to
reason about a subject in which they are untrained? I could ask the same
people their opinion on the implications of the superposition of entangled
quantum states, but it wouldn't reveal much.

Ask someone in 1952 how likely it would be that IBM could shrink the tubes in
one of their computers and put a billion of them in an area the size of the
stamp, while at the same time making the computer more than a million times
more powerful and using as much power as a tabletop radio. Just about
any layperson in 1952 would be forgiven for predicting that it was impossible.
And yet exactly this has happened.

People also have a terrible intuition of probabilities. If most people
area easily flummoxed by the famous
Monty Hall problem,
they are in no position to intuit how likely it is that countless trillions
of bacteria over billions of years might produce some certain degree of
complexity.

"The Cell's Protective Wall" and "Inside the Factory" won't be quoted
as it is an entire section of the document. It discusses some of the
scientific discoveries of microbiology. (pp. 9, 10, 11)

Again, the tone is one of, "Whoa, this is complex and fascinating,"
setting up the conclusion that things are so complex that it couldn't
have happened accidentally. But the same points made before apply:

These facts were determined by pragmatic science, not the Bible or prayer

The cell biology being described is the result of more than three billion
years of refinement. Nobody thinks first life looked like this.

The sidebar "How fast can a cell reproduce?" ends with this question:

How is it possible, then, that cells can reproduce so fast and
so accurately if they are the product of undirected accidents? (p. 11)

By far, the biggest mistake and one so egregious that one concludes that
creationists are willfully ignoring the point because it has been made
thousands of times:

>>> Evolution isn't just the accumulation of undirected accidents.
>>> Selection is the ratchet that gives change a direction.

If this isn't clear, there is no point in discussing evolution, and you have
entirely missed the heart of Darwin's contribution.

Smaller points:

no scientist thinks that early life had such robust fidelity of
replication

early life didn't have nearly the competition that life forms now
face, so it didn't need the same defenses that life does now

your genome probably contains about 100 random errors, common to all
of your cells due to mistakes during the fusion of your parent's
sperm and egg.

each cell in your body probably has dozens of errors unique to that
cell, made during its production.

cells can and do create transcription errors every day throughout
your body

computer hardware is much faster and more accurate at copying
information than is DNA replication. It is amazing, but not divine.

the cell is a lot less like a factory than a bee hive -- a factory
implies a coordinated command center and a construction where things
flow in a streamlined fashion. It is far more chaotic and probabilistic
than the common described cartoon version.

People have a hard time wrapping their brains around is what evolution
permits when there are 1030 cells each running its own evolutionary
experiment for three billion years. 1030 is not a number we are
used to thinking about, so in more familiar units, 1030 cells are
a million million million million million cells.

However, the more that scientists discover about life, the less
likely it appears that it could arise by chance.
To sidestep this dilemma, some evolutionary scientists would like to make
a distinction between the theory of evolution and the question of the
origin of life. But does that sound reasonable to you? (p. 12)

Who says that the more scientists discover about life that the less likely it
appears it could have been by chance? Certainly not the scientists looking
into it.

Finally this pamphlet gets around to addressing to the pervasive and
important mistake of conflating abiogenesis and evolution. The treatment is
hardly satisfying, simply appealing again to the ignorance of the layperson
to sweep the matter under the rug.

Let me make an analogy. It is possible to build a theory of computer science
without having any understanding the history of computing or of how computers
are made. One doesn't need to know about transistors, volts, resistors, or
microchip fabrication.

Likewise, the principles of evolution hold not only in regard to living
things, but anything system which has certain properties, of which living
systems are one.

Are there objects which make copies of themselves?

Is there variety between these objects?

Is there competition for reproductive opportunity between these objects?

If the answer is "yes" to these questions, then evolutionary theory can
apply. There are many other conditions which may further qualify a system
and which more specialized facets of evolution theory can address, but the
three points above are enough. For instance, adding mutation, or feature
transference (either through sexual exchange or some other horizontal "gene"
transfer) makes the picture much richer.

There is a branch of computer science which investigates genetic algorithms:
using populations of similar but not identical algorithms which go through
rounds of competition and selection to produce novel algorithms which out-
perform human designed algorithms.

... DNA and its coded instructions came about through undirected
chance events ... (p. 13)

I can't spend all my time refuting the same HORRIBLE mistakes.

(regarding the statement that if you made DNA 13,000,000 larger
and then stretched it all end to end it would wrap about half way
around the Earth) "Does the suggestion that there was no engineer
behind this feat sound credible to you?" (p. 15)

This is another attempt to impress by stating some mind-boggling fact:
that the dna would wrap half way around the world! Oh, but that is true only
if you made DNA 13,000,000 larger than it really is. Without that scaling,
then stretching all the DNA of a cell end to end would be ten feet long.
That is much less impressive than stretching half way around the world.

There are substances (silica aerogels) where a gram of the substance (e.g.,
the weight of a paper clip) has the surface area approaching that of of a
football field. Does this imply God did it? Of course not.

Once again, just because you can't comprehend something doesn't mean
God is behind it.

Scientists were amazed to discover that the order of those
letters conveys information in a sort of code. (pp. 15, 16)

No, they expected it, but the race was to figure out the details.

DNA has a four-letter code. The order in which those letters (A, T, G,
and C) appear for "words" called codons. Each gene contains, on average,
27,000 letters. These genes and the long stretches between them are
compiled into chapters of a sort -- the individual chromosomes. It takes
23 chromosomes to form the complete "book" -- the genome, or total of
genetic information about an organism.*

* Each cell contains two complete copies of the genome,
46 chromosomes in all (p. 16)

The sequence of genes are not like a chapter in that there isn't a strong
"narrative" sequence to the genes. Also, the mitochondria have their own
DNA, so the claim that the 23 chromosomes is the complete genetic
information about the cell is technically incorrect, but inconsequential
to the point here.

While most, but not all, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, this is
generally not true of most organisms.

The genome would be a huge book. ... Imagine a set of encyclopedias in
which each volume is over a thousand pages long. The genome would fill
428 of such volumes. Adding the second copy that is found in each cell
would make that 856 volumes. (p. 16)

The impressive information density of the cell by itself doesn't prove that
it was designed. The entire point of evolution it to describe how that can
happen. It is dishonest to pose the question, entirely ignore what science
has to say about it, then to claim victory because science can't explain it
(because you weren't listening).

Expressing the size of the genome in printed book form sounds impressive,
but on the other hand, if I told you that you could fit hundreds of human
genomes on a flash memory "thumb" drive, it doesn't sound so impressive
anymore.

Despite advances in miniaturization, no man-made information storage
device can approach such a capacity. (p. 16)

Claiming proof for the existence of God because we don't encode information
as densely as DNA is a stupid game for creationists to play. In fact, more
than a decade ago IBM has shown the ability (with great difficulty and
expense) to arrange individual atoms at the atomic scale, with higher
informational density than that of DNA. It is not a practical storage medium,
but with every passing year the storage density goes up. Would a creationist
be willing to cede the non-existence of God if man can store information more
compactly than DNA does? If not, then why can it be used as proof in favor?

This is also another reappearance of the same mistake: just because we can't
do it today doesn't mean we won't be able to do it tomorrow.

A compact disc may impress us with it symmetrical design, its gleaming
surface, its efficient design." (p. 16)

This can be said too of snowflakes, or the crystalline structure of diamonds,
yet nobody thinks each snowflake is designed.

But what if it [the CD] is embedded with information, not some random
gibberish, but coherent, detailed instructions for building, maintaining,
and repairing complex machinery? ... Would not those written
instructions convince you that there must be some intelligent mind at
work here? Does not writing require a writer? (p. 17)

A genome isn't a book, it isn't a CD. We know books and CDs are man made:
we see them being made. You can use them in a metaphor, but it doesn't
imply this metaphor is applicable in all situations.

Genes have many properties unlike CDs and books, but this tract doesn't
spend any time on that counter evidence. It doesn't explore the implication
of the relatedness of the genetic information found in common between
different organisms, nor of the implications of the pattern of differences
found in the genetic code, nor of the apparent chaotic, purposeless errors
that are strewn about the genome.

Do you know what would impress me? What if the text of the Bible was
encoded into the human genome. That would be an interesting message that
science would have a hard time explaining.

the actual enzyme machinery moves along the DNA "track" at a rate
of about 100 rungs, or base pairs, every second. (p. 18)

This is meant to impress, but a CD can be read at comparable error rates
at 250 million base pairs (bit pairs) per second, 2.5 million times faster.
A single fiber optic cable routinely copies information at 200 million
times faster than DNA machinery, and at a lower error rate to boot.

And even if scientists could create a full model of the DNA and
the machines that copy and proofread it, could they make it actually
function as the one one does? (p. 20)

Just because it isn't possible today doesn't mean it won't be possible
tomorrow. Considering how far we've come in 60 years, especially the past
20 years, I would imagine such things are possible. In fact, Craig Venter
has recently synthesized a fully operational DNA strand from raw chemicals,
non-biologically. The did rely on the machinery of an existing cell stripped
of its own DNA to get it running, but it is a huge step towards further
advances.

Famous scientist Richard Feynman left this note on a blackboard shortly
before his death: "What I cannot create, I do not understand."

This is a statement of Feynman's humility. No scientist claims to understand
the full picture of life, and no scientist claims to have created life. I
don't see how this statement is any kind of rebuttal to evolutionary theory.

If the authors of this paper believe this quote, are they willing to apply it
to themselves? If they can't create God, can they claim to understand Him?

It should also be noted that Feynman was an atheist.

Scientists cannot create DNA with all its replication and
transcription machinery; nor can they fully understand it. (p. 21)

Just because they don't have it all figured out now doesn't mean they can't
figure it out at some point. Besides, they are discovering many things,
some useful, while the Bible offers nothing new.

Francis Crick, a scientist who helped discover DNA's double-helix
structure decided that this molecule is far too organized to have
come about through undirected events. (p. 21)

Right. No scientist thinks it came about via undirected events.

Crick was also an atheist.

More recently, noted philosopher Anthony Flew, who advocated atheism
for 50 years, did an about-face of sorts. At 81 years of age, he began
to express a belief that some intelligence must have been at work in the
creation of life. Why the change? A study of DNA. (p. 21)

Don't put too much weight on what an aging philosopher has to say about
biology. Linus Pauling was a Nobel prize winning chemist, and a Nobel
Peace prize winner. He convinced himself and many other people that mega
doses of vitamin C would cure the common cold as well as cancer. That
idea has been debunked. Just because a scientist is brilliant in one
discipline doesn't mean he will have special insight into an unrelated area.
At least Pauling had a chemistry background; Flew was a philosopher, not a
scientist.

Flew is right, though, in that rationalists follow the evidence. Most have
decided that it doesn't suggest God, especially not the God of the Bible, is
real. Flew decided differently, but hardly became a Christian; he became
a deist: one who believes in a creator God, but a God who remains distant
and unresponsive to individual being's needs and desires.

Question: if human computer technicians cannot achieve such results,
[re: DNA storage capacity] how could mindless matter do so on its own?
(p. 21)

Again, just because we can't engineer such things today doesn't mean we
can't in the future. Our abilities in this area have been increasing
exponentially in recent decades. Also, commercial considerations put
much more emphasis on speed than on absolute density. If someone could
create a chip which had the density of DNA but had the same read/write
speeds and reliability as DNA it would be used in some situations, but
it wouldn't change 95% of how we do things now.

So to turn the question around: if man can create machines which can
copy and transmit information millions of times faster than God can,
what does that say about how powerful God is?

This chapter can be described in two pieces. First, it quote mines a
provocatively titled issue of New Scientist magazine.
Contrary to what this JW tract claims, the magazine does not undermine
evolution; it just argues that overly simplistic models of evolutionary
relatedness need to be abandoned.

The bulk of this chapter is in reference to the fossil record. I haven't
done a very detailed job picking this one apart because of my relative lack
of interest in archeology. Instead, I'll make some more general statements
and point out some errors that don't require detailed understanding of the
fossil record.

"Darwin's Tree Chopped Down" (p. 22)

This section falsely claims that science is discovering that life doesn't
have a common origin. Much of it rests on quotes from the January 2009 issue
of "New Scientist," with a cover story titled "Darwin was Wrong." The
publishers caught a lot of flack from scientists, charging sensationalism.
The magazine itself said in the very issue:

None of this should give succor to creationists, whose blinkered
universe is doubtless already buzzing with the news that "New Scientist
has announced that Darwin was wrong." Expect to find excerpts ripped
out of context and present as evidence that biologists are deserting
the theory of evolution en masse. They are not.

One wonders what the point was then of inviting such misinterpretation,
other than to stir up controversy.

Certainly much has been learned since Darwin's day, and he was wrong in
certain speculations, but the theory of evolution is still very much on firm
ground. The overall point of the article is that the simplistic model of
a tidy tree of descent needs to be replaced by one which accommodates lateral
gene transfer. This is hardly a radical idea, nor a new one.

Lateral gene transfer is significant in unicellular life, but it is much
less important in larger animals, the type which Darwin studied and based
his conclusions on. Yes, sometimes lions and tigers mate and produce
offspring, but it doesn't materially affect the concept of evolution; it just
adds some complications to an already complicated situation.

"What About the Fossil Record?" (p. 23)

I'm not strong on this area as I'm less interested in fossils than in
microbiology, but I do have some general comments. It isn't controversial
that there are periods of stability and periods of great change. The fossil
record documents it, such as the "Cambrian explosion."

Science uses models which are as simple as possible for a given situation,
and complicates things only as required and as new evidence arises. 150
years ago when the fossil record was scant, evolution theories assumed
gradual changes. However, the evidence is that things aren't so simple.
In some cases there does seem to be a continuum of morphological changes,
and in other cases rapid divergence.

Note that rapid divergence happens when the previous ecological equilibrium
is changed, as after worldwide catastrophic events. Gould's "punctuated
equilibrium" posits that genetic drift (genetic changes of presently neutral
effect) accumulates within a population, and only when conditions change
significantly do these accumulated changes get expressed.

Also don't forget that the Cambrian "explosion" happened over tens of millions
of years; the blink of an eye in terms of the world history, but time for
tens of millions of generations of adaptation to occur.

The soccer field graphic is pointless and does nothing to convey what really
happened. Instead, tell people it took tens of millions of years for these
new life forms to appear.

Finally, creationists seem to think the fossil record is only, or just
perhaps the strongest, argument that science has in support of evolution,
when in fact it isn't.

Announcements of "Missing Links" (p. 27)

Yes, it is quite annoying when one reads in the popular press about this or
that "missing link" being discovered. This stupidity is a product of the
press, not science. There is no missing link to be found. If one finds a
fossil which putatively falls between two other species in the fossil record,
it only creates two smaller gaps where previous there was one larger gap.

The discovery of the fossil named "Ida" was roundly criticized at the time by
scientists as making claims that were not supportable, and feared that the
claims were overblown in order to get attention and money. In fact, their
worries were well founded.

I'll treat this briefly because my intent is to point out the scientific
and logical flaws in the information presented, but I don't really care to
argue whether it is reasonable to believe the Bible.

In the course of reading this brochure, were you surprised to learn that
what the Bible says is scientifically accurate? (p. 30)

I was surprised only that it dared to make that bold claim. It showed no
such thing. The Bible makes thousands of claims, and this small brochure
has made no attempt to examine if they are all scientifically accurate.
Even the few which are brought up are wrong, irrelevant, or at best not
contradictory to science. It is unimaginable that someone would confuse
the Bible for a science book.

The Bible teaches that evidence is essential to genuine faith
and that the power of reason is indispensable aid to serving God.
(p. 31)

Then why did this tract do everything it could to discredit the evidence?

assuming that if science can't prove it, then God must have done it.
Please note that even if science is entirely wrong, it doesn't
automatically mean the Bible is right. There are a lot more than two
possible explanations.

ignoring the difference between abiogenesis and evolution.
even if science never answers the question of the origin of life
and gives up on it, it doesn't affect the truth of evolution.

confusing how things are now with how they must have been billions
of years ago

confusing how things are now with how they must be in the future

appealing to the woefully undeveloped intuition and common sense of
laypeople to make analogies and pose quandaries which exploit their
ignorance, instead of informing them. While we can forgive people for
not being versed in the subject, one can't be so generous with the
authors of this pamphlet: I conclude they are intentionally deceiving the
reader.

either pointing out things science isn't sure about, or casting things
in a light to make it appear science is befuddled, yet never giving
any evidence where science clearly indicates evolution did occur.
And there is a lot of it.

observing that life is complicated and wondrous; inferring that God
must have created it

straining to cast evolution as wobbly, often by taking quotes out of
context or through outright distortion

ignoring great bodies of evidence in support of evolution, such as
the genetic record of relatedness

using phrases like, "some scientists say such and such is impossible
to explain scientifically," doesn't really indicate how common such
opinions are, as you can probably find someone to give some support
to just about any position, e.g., "some scientists think alien abductions
are commonplace."

The Big Picture:

if you think evolution is undirected accidents, you have
entirely misunderstood evolution and Darwin's insight

often the amazing facts and intricate details of the working of
microbiology are invoked to impress the layman, and to support the
intuitive but wrong conclusion that such complexity must be designed.
But these facts were discovered by science, not not religion.

consider that no matter how much science has looked at the cell,
as amazing and complicated as it is, there is no suggestion that
there is some spirit or non-physical cause animating it.

time and time again, selective quotes from various scientists are
used to suggest that the Bible has the answers and that science is
lost. Nevertheless, the majority of the scientists they quote
are atheists, and none that I'm aware of are Jehovah's Witnesses.

Perhaps Jehovah's Witnesses don't consider themselves creationists,
but the only difference I could see what that Jehovah's Witnesses
accept that the Earth is 4 billion years old and reconcile that with
Bible by stating that the original word used didn't literally mean
"day" but just a "period of time," and that translation to the modern
tongue has lost that distinction. Other than that, though, it is
Creationism through and through.

It was stupid of me, but I wrote this all up before I checked to see if
anybody else had already done a "take-down" on this brochure. Indeed,
there has been, but none as thorough as the one titled
Weighed and Found Wanting. Annoyingly, the original source of it
appears to be on a mediafire server, one where they make it impossible to
download the thing you are after and instead the page is designed to
induce you to click on downloads to unrelated crapware installers.
However, I did find
a safe to use page referencing it.
The author apparently released it under a Creative Commons license.
For convenience, I'm also providing
a link to a local copy.
Note that I am not the author of the linked PDF, who apparently wishes to
remain anonymous.

I found
another page
where people are discussing this Watchtower brochure.
Please see the extensive comment by user "wobble" on 7/29/2010, which gives
many more examples of quotes in more complete context, showing that the
authors of the Watchtower document were dishonest in their selective
quotations. Someone has recast it in tabular form
at this link, which is an easier to read format.

As an example of quote mining, there is this example from page 12 of the
Watchtower tract, which quotes microbiologist Ruda Popa this way:

The Complexity of the mechanisms required for the functioning of a living
cell is so large that simultaneous emergence by chance seems impossible.

The book Between Necessity and Probability: Searching for the Definition and Origin of Life,
2004, page 129, the full quote reads:

The Complexity of the mechanisms required for the functioning of a living
cell is so large that simultaneous emergence by chance seems impossible.
Most scientists now believe that life originated in a number of smaller and
probabilistically likelier steps. Instead of being one big chance like
event, life might actually be an accretion of a series of events emerging
at different moments in time.

John Mullin, of Limerick, Ireland, read this page and had a few notes
on the subject:

p4-p5

With regards to the Meinesz quote on p4/5 (which is out of context) (footnote 1):
"no significant advance in scientific knowledge leads in this direction.",
noble laureate Jack Szostak's team has made some interesting discoveries
regarding proto-cells. There is a
summary here.
He also has a
set of videos on youtube
presenting some related research in a more approachable way.

p9

In the section on p9, the text says: "radical changes in the function of the
ingested cells [...] (* = no experimental evidence exists to show that such an
event is possible)"